Shattered Shields
by corellian-smuggler
Summary: Leia and Han struggle to find their footing in the aftermath of the Battle of Yavin. Multi-chapter follow-up to The Incident.


_**Author's Note: This story is the direct follow-up to my fic, The Incident. Please note that this story contains mature themes and a brief mention of self-harm.**_

Chapter One

She was fairly certain she was spinning. Spinning and floating—but no, wait… Not floating. She was definitely lying on… something. Groggily, she attempted to move, but none of her limbs were very responsive, and floating or not, she was definitely still spinning. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, hoping to perhaps sink back into the thoughtless, peaceful oblivion of sleep, but every passing moment was driving her further and further from that warm, heavy darkness and hurtling her more decidedly into the spinning, throbbing reality of consciousness.

Groaning, Leia rolled onto her side. Her head was pounding and she felt incredibly nauseous. She had just resigned herself to lying still for as long as possible before she finally felt the stirrings of doubt and confusion begin to take root. _Why_ did the room seem to be spinning? Why did she feel so wretched? She wracked her brain, trying to recall the events of the previous evening, but it was like wading through mud—her thoughts were murky and her mind felt sluggish and slow. Just when she was deciding she must have contracted some kind of virus that was making her feel sick, her addled mind finally registered that something was very wrong. She was not in her bed. The mattress beneath her was too soft to have been her sad military cot, and the room around her was far too dim to have been her quarters. Even through her closed eyelids, she was aware of the darkness, and she never turned down the lights completely in her room, not even when she managed to sleep.

Then there was the smell. She was certain that her pillow most certainly didn't smell like—like aftershave and—and—

Leia sat bolt upright. The sudden motion almost made her vomit, but that was nothing compared to the shock and confusion she felt upon opening her eyes to the sight of Han Solo's cabin. Hastily she rubbed the blur of sleep from her vision and cast a cursory glance at her surroundings. The Falcon's captain was nowhere in sight. Her initial panic abated only for a moment before the ramifications as to _why_ exactly she would be waking up in Han's bunk hit her like a wave of icy water, and in an instant of anxious absurdity, she shoved off the covers and looked down at her body, terrified that she might not have been wearing any clothes. A quick inspection did, however, confirm that she was fully dressed, her belt still buckled and the fasteners of her shirt still done up to her neck, although the hand she pressed to her aching head found that her braids were in shambles.

She slumped back into the bunk in relief, sprawling inelegantly against Han's mattress, her face pressed into Han's pillow, and her legs tangled in Han's sheets.

 _Organa, what the hell did you do last night?_ Dizzily she recalled meeting Han and Luke in the west corridor, fighting with Han, and eventually agreeing to join him for something to eat on his ship. The rest was harder to remember. The… whiskey? Yes, she'd definitely downed a considerable amount of his Corellian reserve, she grimaced, chagrined, and then she'd… she'd…

Goddess.

She'd come on to Han Solo.

Her stomach lurched. The still-spinning cabin suddenly flipped end-over-end as she flung herself from the bunk and staggered to the 'fresher, just barely cycling open the door and crouching before the commode in time to empty her stomach. Her mouth had tasted awful upon waking—dry and tacky—but that was nothing compared to the bile she retched. Unfortunately, Leia had become accustomed to throwing up in the months that had passed since her internment on the Death Star, but she was completely unused to this awful, burning chaos in her stomach. It took her several moments of lying slouched over the cold rim of the sani, her head against her limp arm, before she was finally confident enough that she was finished to risk straightening back up.

Sitting back on her heels in the cabin's cramped 'fresher and scrubbing her hands over her face, Leia tried desperately to calm down. _Alright,_ she thought, shivering and unsteady, _so I tried to get Han Solo to sleep with me. Then what?_ She racked her brain. It was all a blur, and she could only remember bits and pieces. The only reason she was even sure that she had indeed straddled him and pressed her lips to his was because the memory of his furious yelling was the one thing she could remember clearly. _Goddess,_ she thought, _I came on to Han Solo, and_ _ **he turned me down**_. Logically Leia knew that this was an incredibly lucky fact—knew that this crisis would have been an unprecedentedly terrible disaster if he had actually taken her up on her offer. She couldn't even begin to think what she would have done if she had woken up in a state of undress—possibly with an equally undressed Han still beside her—but still, even as she realized that she'd gotten lucky—or rather, that it was good that she _hadn't_ gotten lucky—she still felt the weight of overwhelming embarrassment settle in her stomach and chest. She'd thrown herself at him, she lamented, leaning back to rest against the wall. She'd quite literally begged Han Solo to sleep with her. She would have to flee to the Outer Rim; she'd never live it down.

Finally, after a long rest on the floor while she attempted to pull herself together, Leia gingerly forced herself to stand and crept back into the bunkroom. Han was probably close by, but if she was silent and quick, she decided she could probably escape without getting caught. _Alright, alright,_ she fretted, palms against her throbbing head. _Boots. Where are my boots?_

Frantically she searched the cabin, groaning miserably when her head spun again each time she bent over to look for her footwear. Despite his scruffy appearance, Han's living space was almost immaculately neat and tidy, so it was very quickly clear that her boots were elsewhere on the ship. The sharp stab of dismay that this incited was a cruel awakening; until that moment she had been deluding herself into believing she wasn't afraid to face Han, but the idea of searching the main hold for her shoes where Han could catch her made her stomach churn again. Even worse, what if he was sitting out there when she walked in? That seemed terribly likely, and Leia was furious with herself. She had defied the Emperor himself on more than one occasion—to his face, in the senate—and yet she was actually afraid to see Han Solo of all people. The problem was that none of her experiences in politics or diplomacy came close to preparing her for such a situation.

She took a moment to gather herself, standing with her eyes closed and her palm pressed against her forehead. _Organa, get it together._ This was hardly the worst spot she'd ever gotten herself into. Mustering her courage, she left the cabin. The ship was suspiciously silent, and she hurried with as much dignity as she could manage into the main hold, expecting Han or Chewie to appear at any moment. They were nowhere to be seen, however, and her boots were on the floor beside the table. She stepped into them without even unfastening them first. Leia's eyes darted around the hold, searching for her datapad next, but it was nowhere to be found. Deciding she didn't need it with any immediacy, she darted for the ramp. Not until she was hurrying into the hangar did she realize that she would be seen by anyone around leaving Han's ship at—what time? Alarmed, she glanced down at her chrono and nearly had a stroke when she saw that it was well past 1000. She'd missed two meetings already and was now late to her post, and that panic was perhaps the only thing that shielded her from absolute shame as she hurried through the hangar, entirely aware that at least half a dozen flight techs were gaping at her.

It wasn't until later, after she had hastily showered (multiple times she had to stop to crouch beneath the spray of tepid water, lowering her head between her knees to combat the waves of alcohol-induced nausea, or else pressing her forehead weakly against the cold metal of the shower stall to keep the room from spinning), wrapped herself in a thin towel, downed several pills to help with her upset stomach and headache, and quickly braided her damp hair that Leia recalled, with a jolt that physically shook her, that trying to seduce Han wasn't by far the worst thing she'd done the previous night. In little tiny, hazy pieces, she thought she recalled… or had she dreamt it…?

 _Goddess._

Leia abruptly threw up again, barely comforted by the fact that she was at least secluded away in the privacy of her own 'fresher.

Kneeling, for the second time in one miserable morning, on the hard floor in front of the commode, Leia groaned into the ringing silence. She couldn't have possibly, _possibly_ told Han that she woke up screaming from nightmares. No amount of drink could have made her divulge to him such private—such secret—

But she had. She knew—suddenly so certainly—that she had. And even worse, she'd wept. She'd cried all over him like a hysterical child, babbling drunkenly, letting all her secrets out. Leia's heart was pounding, her palms sweating against her grip on the toilet bowl's rim. What if she'd talked about the Death Star? Her interrogation? Tarkin? Her stomach roiled again, but Leia could get nothing up when she gagged. She couldn't remember, she realized with dread. She'd blacked out and she couldn't remember what she'd said or done. What if she'd told him about—about—

It was twenty more minutes before Leia was finally able to curl up, shaking with dehydration and fatigue, on the metal floor plates in front of the commode, the urgency of her second bout of illness dissipated. Her skin was still damp from her shower and clammy with sweat, and the threadbare towel twisted around her did nothing to protect from the chill in the air or the cold of the durasteel against her arms and legs. Getting up seemed an impossibility. Just lying there immobile on the floor seemed a hardship.

It was so much worse than she'd initially realized. So much worse than having to worry that Han would tease her for drinking so much, or for—for—she couldn't even think about it without cringing, the way she'd sat herself in his lap and grabbed at his face like some small child bestowing a sloppy kiss on the lips of a parent. She couldn't bear to remember the way he'd had to literally toss her off of him, how she'd been straining against his grip in a humiliating attempt to kiss him again. That complete lapse in dignity and decorum would have been unbearable enough, to have him ridicule her for that. To see his smug smirk as he told Luke that she'd thrown herself at him, to have him know that she'd thought about him _that way_ …

That would have been terrible, but Leia could have handled it. She was certain that she could have blamed it on the alcohol—perhaps, told Han not to let it go to his head and insist that she most certainly would never go to bed with such an arrogant scoundrel of a man who was quite ready to step out of her life forever… Certainly she could have mustered her best Senate face, her best snide tone, and drawn on hers years of practiced, unshakeable composure to survive that particular embarrassment.

Perhaps she could have. Perhaps not. The one thing she was certain she could not do, however, was looking him in the eye after having burst into _tears_ when he'd denied her. She could not bear to look at him and know that he knew she was falling apart, that he knew she was—she was…

What was she? Drowning? Weak? Two centims short of insane? So depressed that she could barely force the necessary number of calories into her system each day? So plagued by loss and fear and PTSD that she couldn't sleep without medication—couldn't take the medication because of the awful nightmares she had when she finally slept? She had no appetite, no capacity for human interaction. Every moment she spent by herself she was tormented by her isolation and loneliness, tortured by her guilt and the loss of her family and home, but every moment spent she spent with anyone else was characterized by a profound disconnect from those around her. Every conversation felt pointless and maddening—how could she partake in lighthearted small talk when all of Alderaan was gone? And then there was the way the rebels all looked at her: the hesitation on their faces, like she were a terminally ill patient they dared not disturb, or else the discomfort and unease simply by being in her presence. They didn't know how to talk to her because of what she'd endured, or they didn't know how to speak to her because of her title, or they didn't feel they should interact with her in any manner outside of alliance business, as she was a member of High Command. She felt manic and hardly human. One day feeling too much all at once, and the next day feeling nothing at all, unable to escape other than to devote every ounce of herself to the rebellion—to a degree that privately, in her most honestly introspective moments, she knew was unhealthy. The night before had been unhealthy, and now Han Solo _knew_. He would determine that she'd lied her way through her psych evaluation. He'd think she was unfit to carry out her responsibilities—unfit to take charge of anything or anybody when she was so terribly failing at even getting by herself. _He would pity her,_ she thought with an ache. And if there was one single thing in the galaxy that Leia couldn't endure, it was pity.

She lay on the floor for another hour. In the aftermath of her sick, frantic panic, she felt numb and hollow, registering nothing but the occasional twinge of mortification or dread that twisted in her gut. The numbness was nothing new; it accompanied the hollowness often on the days when she didn't feel full to bursting with grief and rage and guilt and sadness. The mortification, however, was unprecedented, and Leia made the astronomical mistake of wondering, with a detached sort of anguish, what her mother would think of her lying on the floor, sick from whiskey, shirking her day's duties, and wallowing in her despair. The new wave of shame she felt then was somehow even worse than the shame she'd already been feeling, to remember the ever-calm Queen Breha, and with fiercely trembling limbs she pushed herself onto her hands and knees and reached shakily for the steel blade she kept hidden under the sink.

It felt like ice between her cold fingers, and she sat back on her heels, pushing aside the edge of her towel and holding the metal against her flesh. For a moment it was as though she were someone else, a ship set suddenly on autopilot or a droid at the mercy of its primary programming. She was frozen, outside of herself, as she sat there crouched on the floor with the blade hovering over her leg. A single, solitary mark was red and angry against her pale skin—the single result of the last time she'd found herself suffocating beneath the weight of her feelings. She hadn't been sure that day if it had been a punishment or a battle against the numbness or a desperate distraction from the pain as she'd dragged the cold metal blade against the tender flesh of her upper thigh. But she had realized, afterwards, that the split second of satisfaction she'd felt in that bizarre moment of simultaneous self-punishment and self-medication was entirely eclipsed by the disappointment she felt in herself. That day she'd decided it was entirely unacceptable—her penance would be served aiding the cause, her anger channeled into action, her grief into vengeance and her pain lessened by the therapy of constant work. Self-pity was a weakness she would not tolerate, and a luxury she couldn't afford.

Leia blinked and came back to herself, and looked almost in surprise at the blade she held—startled that she had reached for it so impulsively after having decided that she wouldn't touch it ever again. Furious with herself and entirely overwhelmed, she whipped the blade violently at the wastebasket and slumped back against the cold wall, scrubbing her hands over her face. She propped her elbows on her knees and rested her head in her hands. It was time to pull herself together.

xxx

When Leia finally arrived at her post, her skull still throbbing and her limbs shaky and weak, it was well past noon. She'd tried to coax some water into her system in the hopes that it would perhaps alleviate the trembling in her hands and the ache in her head, but unfortunately its only effect had been to provoke her still-churning stomach.

Ignoring the stares she could feel boring into the back of her head, she sat down at her monitor in the command center. For almost a full minute she stared at the keypad without moving. _Focus_ , she commanded herself. What was wrong with her that she couldn't _focus_? Everything that had happened the night before was irrelevant. She could change nothing of what she'd done or what she'd said. The past was a reality that she knew all too well she couldn't change. What mattered was her duty—what mattered was the rebellion.

Leia reached for her headset.

When she had been a spy working within the Imperial government, her duties had focused primarily on providing Intel and writing reports on politicians, diplomats, and senators: who was sympathetic to their cause, who would actually be willing to provide assistance in any small capacity, who was neutral and who was oblivious and who was actually under the Emperor's thumb as opposed to who was pretending. Which politicians could be trusted as contacts and which ones also held, as she had, positions of power on their own home planets. What royal families denounced, in secret, Imperial authority and who could be persuaded by the right means to their plight. She analyzed documents that their slicers pulled from Imperial databanks, scanning for code, identifying motives, drawing on any and all knowledge she had gleaned as a princess, diplomat, senator, and politician. Representing her planet on the galactic platform had required an extensive understanding of galactic economics, of inter-system and inter-planetary relations, and of the governing bodies and structural and cultural intricacies of all Core World planets as well as many mid and rim territory planets, and her work as a rebel spy had required no small amount of networking in both directions—compiling lists of allies as well as infiltrating staunchly Imperial circles. She had also been a point of contact for many undercover operatives for the rebellion, passing them information under the guise of a diplomatic mission to the planets where they were stationed, and several occasions had found her planting bugs, jamming transmissions, wiping hard drives and stealing data chips herself.

Consequently, her role following her official enlistment into rebel ranks was primarily in intelligence and analysis. If they were notified that a new Imperial base was being constructed, Leia helped determine whether it was to draw the planet in question more firmly under its control, to staunch rebellion, to exploit resources, to impede or incite trade, what intergalactic actors might have been involved and whether or not they would oppose the Imperial presence. She researched possible sources of funds and donors and acted as a consultant in the coordination of missions. She also held what she often felt was merely a nominal seat in High Command, one that she rather suspected she'd come into because the rebel leaders hadn't been exactly sure what to do with her. Desperate to demonstrate the extent of her competencies and the possibilities of her contributions, she was frequently requesting more tasks, greater responsibilities, and hands-on duties that would prove she was not just a princess but an asset willing to carry her own weight.

As a result, Leia was also in charge of all supplies on base and their distribution among personnel, and she conferred with her colleagues on where to obtain needed medical supplies, ammunitions, food stores, and parts replacements. Working in a similar vein, Leia also oversaw all shipments and supply runs and negotiated with all contracted pilots, which meant that Han Solo was under her direct employ. That fact had caused more than one argument between the two of them and was the reason why the moment she accessed her personal messages, she had multiple invoices containing Solo's name in the subject line. Groaning and navigating away from her inbox—anything not to think of him and the humiliation of the previous evening—she almost jumped out of her skin to feel a sudden touch against her shoulder.

"Princess?"

General Rieekan stood behind her, wearing an expression of such pronounced concern on his usually gruff, stern face that Leia was taken aback. Dizzy to have turned around so quickly, she swallowed and took a deep breath before speaking.

"General?"

Rieekan's frown became more pronounced, and Leia's stomach dropped. She was hours late for her rotation, after all, and such extreme tardiness would surely have its consequences. She bit her lip. She had insisted to him a month ago that she wasn't stretching herself too thin, that she could handle the rapidly increasing workload she continued to volunteer for, and here she was having missed two critical meetings with no notice, and having skipped the entire first half of her shift... She braced herself for the conversation she was sure she was about to have.

"Don't overdo it, Princess. We can live without you for a few days."

"I—excuse me?"

The General shook his head at her.

"I was concerned this morning when I received your message, but even then I had a feeling that you'd try to come in for your shift eventually. The Hassadian flu is serious business, Your Highness. You should be resting."

For one flabbergasted instant in which she truly had no idea what was going on, Leia had the impression that she must have been gaping at him like some kind of pale, sick fish—mouth opening and then closing in confusion. Then it clicked. Her irretrievable datapad. A message sent to Rieekan. Her late, uninterrupted sleep. She felt her face burn hot and angry.

"The Hassadian flu," she repeated meekly.

By the look on his face Leia could tell that the man feared she was suffering some kind of fever-induced delusion.

"I stand by what I said this morning," he said gruffly. "You should head down to medical, Princess. The Hassadian—"

For one horrified moment she almost thought she was going to get sick again.

"That won't be necessary," she muttered. "I appreciate your concern but I-I think I just needed some rest and now—"

Rieekan cast a glance around them, as though to ensure, for Leia's sake, that no one might overhear what he was about to say. He ducked his head.

"Your Highness," he said lowly, "I cannot in good faith allow you to remain at your post while you're ill, and you know that we can't risk spreading illness through the ranks. Forgive me for saying this, but you look terrible. Go to medical. That's an order."

He clasped her shoulder and gave her a look of paternal, gruff compassion, and, at a loss, Leia nodded and left the command center.

She really had to give him credit. He'd known exactly what he was doing with that one. She could hardly have argued with Rieekan about completing her shift if she allegedly had contracted such a contagious malady, and what was more, she probably wouldn't be allowed back in the command center for a few days at least. And what else could she have done? Admit that Han Solo had stolen her datapad and sent a message without her knowledge while she slept passed out in his bunk? He'd known she'd be forced to go along with it, and Leia cursed him under her breath. She frequently forgot just how extremely smart Han was, and how subtle he was about using that lapse in people's perception of him to his own advantage. As it stood, he'd effectively stripped her of her work—indefinitely—for days. Days before her of inaction. Precious time she could have spent being useful, now dashed all because of Han Solo's invasive action. The notion sent frissons of anger through her limbs, but beneath the rising tide of animosity was a kind of bereft, nervous devastation, like she didn't know what she was supposed to do next. He'd sabotaged her purpose, meddled in her life's work, but he'd also robbed her of her only coping mechanism. It seemed an unforgivable betrayal, and the fact that it was most certainly the result of her own mistake the night before—the fact that he knew she was falling apart at the seems—Leia couldn't stand it.

She was seething as she entered the main hangar and made a beeline for the Falcon. Neither Han nor Chewie was anywhere to be seen around the outside of the ship, but the ramp was down. _Good_ , she thought. Her humiliation forgotten in the face of her anger (or, if she were inclined to more calmly consider her feelings, she might admit that her humiliation played an enormous role in her irritation), Leia stormed up the ramp.

She found Han in the cockpit, hunched over a pile of wires and screws, deft fingers at work and face pinched in concentration. The sight of him left her inexplicably frozen, and then his gaze found her where she stood in the threshold. The second their eyes met, Leia found herself transported back to the previous evening with startling clarity, recalling with a pang of stern dismay his arm draped over her shoulder, the easy smile on his face, and how _alive_ she'd felt there with him, passing his bottle of whiskey back and forth and feeling the very real heat of his body next to hers, her thoughts, for the first time in months, not blackened by despair… Leia felt a rush of heat to her face, and shook herself furiously. What in the world had she been thinking? How could she have been so stupid, to let her guard down like that? How could she have put herself in that position with Han Solo? Hadn't he made it so perfectly clear, time and again, what he thought of her? How he felt about her obsessive fervor and "naïve idealistic notions"? Why did it have to have been _him_?

"Hey, how're you feelin'?"

Han set aside his microfuser and rotated his chair towards where she stood, and Leia's ire returned full force.

"The Hassadian flu?" she demanded.

Han shrugged.

"What about it?" he asked innocently.

Leia clenched her jaw. She should have expected such a flippant response. Han was always flippant, always determined to rile her up.

"It is a level 3 offense to impersonate a commanding officer," she said coldly.

"Good thing I'm not enlisted then, huh?"

She felt herself inwardly flinch—it seemed a cruel moment to remind her of that particular reality, what with the implications of her transparent, drunken advances the night before, and in fact Leia sensed the seemingly nonchalant remark had been a deliberate and calculated ploy to distract her from the conversation at hand. Her stomach roiled again, and she balled her hands into fists.

"How did you know my access code?" she pressed, folding her arms across her chest.

"Didn't," he said plainly. They might have been discussing smashball, the way he so easily admitted it. "Walked in and stuck your thumb on the print scanner this morning. Prob'ly could've had a party in there while I was at it, Your Worship. You were out cold."

He turned and reached into the compartment beneath his seat, and when he sat back up it was with her datapad in his hand. Every single thing about his expression and posture was infuriatingly to her: the way he held the datapad out to her as though he had not a care in the world, as though she weren't standing before him shaking with anger and as if he hadn't lied to a senior ranking alliance official in her name. The clearly forced, casual air he'd adopted, which warred with the sharp, knowing look in his eyes. That look said, 'You begged me to go to bed with you last night, and then you cried and passed out in my lap and I'm sparing you from having to acknowledge it now.' Leia couldn't bear it, couldn't tolerate it—the brash irreverence so obviously masking the truth evident in every line of his body from his broad shoulders to his booted feet. She couldn't stand to find herself in a situation where Han Solo was trying to spare her pride, where he had the ability to wield that kind of power over her feelings.

"Let me make this clear," she hissed. "I don't know who you think you are, but you had no right to access my personal datapad, and you certainly had no right to fabricate an illness or contact a member of High Command on my behalf."

She watched Han's hand's flex over his knees, his jaw work.

"Don't thank me too hard, Highness," he said at length, still in that same measured tone of voice. "Last time I checked, you slept in all morning and I covered for you."

Leia's eyebrows shot up.

"Covered for me?"

"That's right."

"You weren't covering for me, Captain. You were at best ensuring that I can't return to my post for the next three days and at worst getting me sent to the medcenter."

Han's eyes flashed.

"Yeah well, seemed to me that a few days' break wouldn't've been so bad, considering," he said defensively. "What'd you expect me to do? Wait for havoc to break loose this morning when you didn't show up where you needed to be and no one could find you? Or should I have commed Rieekan to tell him you were too hungover to make it in for the early shift courtesy of my contraband whiskey?"

Leia stepped further into the cockpit.

"If you were so concerned," she fumed, "you could've woken me up this morning, and you never would have been in that position in the first place."

Han stood, and the hazel of his eyes suddenly burned a hot, dangerous gold.

"Seems to me like I wouldn't've been in that position if you hadn't passed out on my ship last night, princess," he said coolly.

Leia flushed.

"I wouldn't have passed out if you hadn't added liquoring me up to your agenda for the evening," she snapped. She'd known he'd be like this, that he'd rub that in her face. She'd expected it, but not so soon, not so coldly, and she knew she'd been the one to drink too much of her own volition, but it didn't matter. How could it matter when she was so embarrassed—so hurt?

Her words apparently had the desired effect. She watched the anger darken Han's face in an instant.

" _Liquoring_ —?! You're unbelievable!" he gasped.

"The only thing that's unbelievable in this situation is that you thought it was acceptable to hack into my messages, lie to General Rieekan, and remove me from my post! My work is important, Han! You know what's at stake! Every single second matters and you just sidelined me for days with this "Hassadian flu"—

"Stop," Han barked. His voice reverberated around the cockpit. "You think I don't know what's going on here? I see right through your little self-righteous charade, Highness. This isn't about the message to Rieekan and it's not about the damn rebellion—"

"It's about the fact that you made a decision that effects me—"

"It's about," Han shouted over her, "the fact that you're embarrassed about what happened last night, and now you're finding some bullshit reason to yell at me to save face—"

"You had no right—"

"I was only trying to help!" Han hollered, throwing his hands up. "'M not doing this with, you, Leia! You got a real kriffing problem here! Why can't you fucking let people help you?"

"I don't need your help, Han!" she screamed, so loudly that she was as startled as Han seemed to be, but she suddenly couldn't control herself. "You are the last person in the entire galaxy that I would ever turn to for help!"

Han visibly flinched. He looked at her like he'd never really seen her before.

"That so?" he sneered, breathing heavily, and Leia, too, found that she was panting, her heart thundering in her chest. "Didn't seem like that last night, when you were fucking begging me for a very particular kind of help, _Princess_."

Leia recoiled.

The silence in the cockpit was absolute. Han's face was livid and guarded, and his towering height loomed over her, tall frame backlit by the light filtering in through the transparisteel behind him. She felt suddenly, terribly small. Leia's eyes stung and her vision blurred, distorting the hard line of his jaw and the awful accusation in his gaze.

She turned and hurried from the ship without another word.


End file.
